We have a new entry into the timeless genre that is ‘Kids Doin’ Stuff’. Welcome, Riddle of Fire. Shot in fantastic 16mm, we join Hazel, Jodie and Alice, three rambunctious kids, in the impossible task of baking their mother a pie. High stakes indeed. What follows is a narrative much like a Russian nesting doll, or to borrow Shrek’s analogy, an onion. There’s layers! What starts as a simple errand winds up, through a series of hijinks, as a much more complicated affair. They meet a fairy, get sort of kidnapped, hike through the woods and shoot a lot of people (very accurately) with paintballs, all on their quest to obtain a single speckled egg.

There’s a timelessness to Weston Razooli’s feature debut: it seems to exist simultaneously in the present day, the 80s, and some nether zone time can’t touch. Its quasi-medieval score and the whimsical nature of the gloriously warm cinematography are partly responsible for this feeling, as is the stilted, often awkward dialogue between the characters. It’s fantastical without being overbearing, though the film suffers a little from pacing issues – if it had been 20 minutes shorter it wouldn’t have suffered much. 

Riddle of Fire‘s imaginative narrative often feels like playing make-believe as a kid did: unencumbered, joyful, weird and inevitably confused. A quirky little journey of a film that signals the arrival of an exciting new director, it is well worth a watch. It’ll also make you crave blueberry pie, so do proceed with caution.

Released 7 Jun by Icon Film; certificate 12A